The present invention relates generally to parametrically pumped passive RF networks with a single source of energy bled from the input to the networks, to achieve (i) RF phase conjugation of any order; (ii) phase modulation; (iii) noise reduction in communications channels; and (iv) power transmission loss reduction.
The present invention is in the spirit of Tesla's outlook on electromagnetics. Tesla's approach to electrical engineering addresses and accents primarily the inductive-reactive part of electromagnetic field-matter interactions, rather than the resistive part. His approach is more comparable with the physics of nonlinear optics and many-body systems than with that of the single-body systems of current electrical engineering. The Tesla approach is fundamentally a nonlinear many-body approach and may be contrasted with the approach of mainstream electrical engineering, both linear and nonlinear. The nonlinear aspects of mainstream electrical engineering are based on feedback in the resistive field, whereas the nonlinearity in Tesla's approach is based on coupled inductive oscillators using to-and-fro shuttling of energy to and from isolated capacitative stores through non-circuit elements attached to conventional circuits. These network arrangements, which are called oscillator-shuttle-circuit networks herein, or OSC networks (Barrett, 1991), result in adiabatic nonlinearities in complete oscillator-shuttle-circuit systems. OSC networks are inductive-reactive with two-way directional line feedback rather than resistive single-way directional line feedback, the latter being the mainstream approach to nonlinear devices. The OSC network arrangement permits a device or network analog of bulk material nonlinear susceptibilities.
The present invention permits 3-wave, 4-wave . . . n-wave mixing using OSC network devices as the host medium, rather than bulk material as the host medium. The present invention also permits RF phase conjugation and the generation of the complex conjugate of an input wave. The interactions of oscillator-shuttles (OS) and circuits (C) to which they are attached to form OSC networks are not describable by linear versions of Kirchhoff's and Ohm's laws. The oscillator shuttles, OSs, of OSC networks are floating grounds which are functionally independent and not common grounds. Multiple isolated "floating" grounds for periodic energy storage and removal by oscillator-shuttles are not describable in the simple monolithic circuit format. The OSC network of the present invention permits a many-body definition of the internal activity of device subsystems which act at different phase relations. The OSC network concept of the present invention is a basis for polyphase systems of energy transfer.
The OSC networks which implement four-wave mixing are algebraic topological analogs of quaternionic systems and more complex OSC networks are analogs of more complex number elements (e.g., Cayley numbers and "beyond Cayley numbers").